Managing your undead minions 101

[Dalebert]

I'm new to the whole undead minions thing and I'm curious how some of you handle it. I'm sure a lot of this depends on your particular DM and how lenient he is. Here are a few thoughts.

I like the idea of having a lot of tiny bloody skeletons mainly for combat advantage. The idea would be to maneuver them into place to get flanking and to have them run by opponents and use up their AoOs. Stuph like that. They're fairly disposable since they just come back to life an hour later. Doesn't matter if an enemy kills it in one swipe. That's an attack that's wasted and not directed at my party.

1) How hard is it to get the exact behavior you want when commands are complicated by having a lot of minions? Will the DM let you give a number of specific commands to specific creatures in a round? I assume you can't name your undead for the sake of clarity of communication. Do they automatically know when you're addressing them or does each and every one respond to every command? Do they get confused sometimes like not quite being able to tell which one you're pointing at?

2) Do you lose control of bloody skeletons when they die and have to regain it somehow when they return to life an hour later?

3) How impractical is it to have a bunch of undead with you in a dungeon? Should I keep my tiny undead in a big sack carried by a larger undead? Are they noisy?

4) Can you command them with a message spell?

5) Can you animate a swarm of tiny creatures? For instance, could you have a swarm of bloody skeleton rats?

Any thoughts or tips you have about managing and taking advantage of undead minions are welcome.

[Blackhawk748]

Im not sure what a Bloody Skeleton is, but i can answer a few questions.

Yes you can animate a swarm, they have a Bone Rat Swarm in Libris Mortis. Your gonna love that book.

As for practicality in a dungeon, i only ever had a problem with my Hydra Zombie, medium size skeletons you just have walk in front of you and trip traps for you.

Also ive never had a problem with getting the behavior i wanted out of my minions, and as far as i know undead always know which one your talking about.

For tips i loved doing a shield wall, theres a great PrC on here called Marshall of the Eternal Legion, its quite balanced but its homebrew so some people wont let you play it. But if they do you can train your unintelligent undead to have a few combat feats, i loved giving them Shield Wall, Phalanx Fighting, and Weapon Finesse. Made a very scary regiment of skeletons with that.

[atemu1234]

Yes, you maintain control. They're the same skeletons, and thus they still follow you. You can animate a swarm.

[Coidzor]

One of the biggest pieces of general advice on undead/minionmancy in general is that it's better to restrict yourself to a half dozen or fewer minions that are participating actively in whatever is going on at any given time for smoothness of play and DM-Player relations. So 6 heavier duty bloody skeletons is, without specific OKing by the DM in advance, probably going to fly better than a large number of tiny bloody skeletons that are going to swarm all over the battlefield.

[Dalebert]

One of the biggest pieces of general advice on undead/minionmancy in general is that it's better to restrict yourself to a half dozen or fewer minions that are participating actively in whatever is going on at any given time for smoothness of play and DM-Player relations. So 6 heavier duty bloody skeletons is, without specific OKing by the DM in advance, probably going to fly better than a large number of tiny bloody skeletons that are going to swarm all over the battlefield.

I can see that. Maybe I'll just keep a sack of tiny ones for tight quarters, like when there's no room to go around. They can run through an enemy space to get flanking, right?

I also like the idea of having a wolverine skeleton in case I need burrowing.

[Diachronos]

1) How hard is it to get the exact behavior you want when commands are complicated by having a lot of minions? Will the DM let you give a number of specific commands to specific creatures in a round? I assume you can't name your undead for the sake of clarity of communication. Do they automatically know when you're addressing them or does each and every one respond to every command? Do they get confused sometimes like not quite being able to tell which one you're pointing at?

2) Do you lose control of bloody skeletons when they die and have to regain it somehow when they return to life an hour later?

3) How impractical is it to have a bunch of undead with you in a dungeon? Should I keep my tiny undead in a big sack carried by a larger undead? Are they noisy?

4) Can you command them with a message spell?

5) Can you animate a swarm of tiny creatures? For instance, could you have a swarm of bloody skeleton rats?

1) I think the complexity depends on the actual number, the commands in question, and DM ruling. Generally simple commands given to your whole retinue don't even use up an action, but I've had cases where I had to sacrifice my own actions to guide a Giant skeleton around to a specific space to attack an enemy. If you have a way to give them an Intelligence score it would make things MUCH easier.

3) Invest in the biggest Bag of Holding you can get your hands on. Useful for both stashing corpses until you can animate them, and for carrying around your minions without having them actually take up space.
For the practicality of using them in a dungeon, it depends on the space. If it's narrow passageways, maybe keep most of them in reserve and a couple out in front to set off traps. Noise... I'm not entirely sure, but I don't believe they'd be much louder than a normal person walking around depending on how you equip them.

It's usually better to have a handful of powerful minions than a bunch of little ones, since the powerful ones tend to both last longer and have a bigger impact in battle. My personal recommendation is anything big with lots of attacks, like dragons, hydras, and chimeras. Add in the Undead Torch spell and Deadly Cold feat, and they're going to shred anything that gets close.

[Coidzor]

I can see that. Maybe I'll just keep a sack of tiny ones for tight quarters, like when there's no room to go around. They can run through an enemy space to get flanking, right?

I also like the idea of having a wolverine skeleton in case I need burrowing.

Actually, how are you getting Tiny creatures to threaten outside of the 5' square they're in?

...I don't think they can provide flanking to other creatures while inside the space of the creature that one wants to gain flanking on, at any rate.

Oh, utility undead are great, it can just really bog down the flow of the game if a summoner or necromancer takes up a huge chunk of time moving around and attacking with more creatures than there are PCs. One way of alleviating this, at least partially, that has been proposed and seems to have worked for some is to allow some of the other players to direct some of the undead in combat themselves.

[Dalebert]

3) Invest in the biggest Bag of Holding you can get your hands on.

All such items are rare in his game and cannot be made by crafting (PC or NPC). In fact, he's banned PC crafting of all types except spell trigger items. However, I'm going to have undead carrying things for me so it's not too bad. I'm a small ratfolk with an 8 STR myself. Encumbrance is an ongoing issue.

Actually, how are you getting Tiny creatures to threaten outside of the 5' square they're in?

I forgot about that. I guess a tiny creature never provides flanking. That makes the idea of having tiny minions a lot less useful. However, I will keep a few around once I can possess my minions at lvl 8 for scouting purposes. They still seem useful for using up AoO though. I could see the DM saying that many enemies would just ignore them in favor of focusing on larger threats but that depends on how smart the enemy is.

Oh, utility undead are great, it can just really bog down the flow of the game if a summoner or necromancer takes up a huge chunk of time moving around and attacking with more creatures than there are PCs. One way of alleviating this, at least partially, that has been proposed and seems to have worked for some is to allow some of the other players to direct some of the undead in combat themselves.

Wolverines seem to have decent attacks as well, at least at this level. I may change my mind later. One concern with creatures large-sized or bigger is that we're often in tight spaces. That tends to mean having some medium-sized undead is a must.

I like the idea of letting others control some of them which raises another question. Can you command an undead to obey someone else?

[Diachronos]

I like the idea of letting others control some of them which raises another question. Can you command an undead to obey someone else?

I don't see why it shouldn't be possible, at least in theory. Considering most Undead that a necromancer would use are mindless, though, it might be a DM's call on whether you can do it or not. And they'd still technically be under your control, so they'll still be counting toward your HD limit.

[Dalebert]

I don't see why it shouldn't be possible, at least in theory. Considering most Undead that a necromancer would use are mindless, though, it might be a DM's call on whether you can do it or not. And they'd still technically be under your control, so they'll still be counting toward your HD limit.

Oh, absolutely I would expect them to be under my HD limit at all time. I think the only question comes down to how the DM decides to interpret that mindlessness. Here's the argument I'd make. It says somewhere that they can only understand simple commands and it lists a few examples. "Obey" is a simple command, I suppose. They know how to do it because they do it for you so you're just saying to treat someone else the same as if they were you. Of course, your commands would override at any time, I assume. They're still under your control just following your command to obey someone else.

[Coidzor]

It very much does depend upon the DM, though there is some precedent with mindless golems and constructs being temporarily put under the command of creatures other than their creators.